Buying contact center software? Start with the right questions
Three free resources for evaluating contact center and AI voice agent vendors. Use them on every vendor you shortlist, including us.
Quick answer
How should you evaluate contact center software? Decide first which calls you want automated and which must stay with people, using the AI or Human framework. Then send every shortlisted vendor the same RFP checklist, so answers can be compared line by line. Finally, run a short pilot on your own calls and score each AI voice agent on the evaluation matrix. All three resources are vendor-neutral and free, and none of them asks you to score a vendor on its marketing.
Contact Center RFP Checklist
Use it when you are writing an RFP or a shortlist questionnaire.
A printable list of the questions to put to every vendor, grouped into fourteen areas: telephony and BYOC, inbound routing, outbound dialing and AMD, omnichannel, AI voice agents, agent assist and QA, reporting, compliance-supporting controls, security, multi-tenancy, integrations, migration, pricing, and support.
Open the guide →AI Voice Agent Evaluation Matrix
Use it when you have two or three AI voice agent vendors and need to choose.
A blank scoring matrix with twenty criteria, from barge-in and response latency to human handoff, Arabic dialects and pricing transparency. For each one: what to test, how to test it on a pilot, and the red flags. Includes a two-week pilot plan.
Open the guide →AI or Human? Which Calls to Automate
Use it before either of the above, to decide what you are buying AI for at all.
A framework that sorts call types into AI good fit, hybrid and human-first, with a decision table and a readiness self-check. It says plainly where AI should not be answering the phone.
Open the guide →In what order should you use them?
Most buying processes go wrong in the same place: the shortlist is built from feature lists before anyone has agreed what the platform is for. A vendor that is strong on outbound pacing looks the same on paper as one that is strong on inbound queues, and an AI voice agent demo on a scripted call tells you very little about your own callers. The resources below are ordered to prevent that.
- 1
Decide what to automate
Work through AI or Human? Which Calls to Automate with your operations lead and whoever owns compliance. The output is a short list of call types that are a good fit for an AI voice agent, a list that should be hybrid, and a list that stays with people. If the first list is empty, you may not need an AI voice agent yet, and that is a legitimate result.
- 2
Send one questionnaire to every vendor
Copy the sections of the Contact Center RFP Checklist that apply to you, and send the same wording to every vendor. Ask for evidence beside each answer: a screen in a live demo, a document, or a contract clause. Treat "on the roadmap" as "not available" until you see a date in writing.
- 3
Pilot on your own calls, then score
For the two or three vendors left, run a two-week pilot and fill in the AI Voice Agent Evaluation Matrix from what you observed, not from what you were told. Measure response latency yourself, listen to the recordings, and count the handoffs that went wrong.
What these guides will not do
They do not rank vendors, and they do not contain scores for anyone, including DialerBee. A published scorecard is only as good as the calls behind it, and the calls that matter are yours: your languages, your carriers, your lists and your regulators. Nor are they legal advice. Where a question touches regulation, such as consent, do-not-call lists, calling hours or recording, the answer you need is how the vendor's controls help you meet your obligations, and your own counsel decides what those obligations are.
If you do put DialerBee through these lists, the pages below are where most of our answers live, and the demo is where we show them on screen.
Where DialerBee answers the common questions
Pricing
Per-agent plans, what is billed by usage, and what your carrier bills you directly.
Trust and security
Encryption, tenant isolation, audit logs, and the honest status of each security programme item.
Integrations
CRM, calendar and messaging connections, plus the REST API and webhooks.
Benchmarks
How answering machine detection is measured, so you can ask any vendor the same questions.
ROI calculator
Model per-minute against per-agent cost with your own volumes before you sign anything.
Deployment options
Three ways to connect: supplied trunks, your own PBX, or your own carrier.
Want to see how we answer the checklist?
Book a live walkthrough and bring your questions, or start a 14-day free trial and test it yourself. No credit card required.